But despite the media attention, statistics don’t support the notion that there are many more airline crashes this year.

“If you study statistics you find out that there are groupings of (disasters) which really still fit within random sampling,” says Tom Bunn, a former military and commercial pilot and the author of a bestselling book on the fear of flying.

“So you can have these random clusters and people can’t believe they don’t mean something, but they don’t.”

And with only 68 crashes recorded beyond the halfway point of 2014, there is a good chance that this year’s total will come in below the 139 in 2013.

Probably the only aviation statistics to have gone up are the number of people afraid of flying and the intensity of their fears, Bunn says.

“When something does grab the attention of the media (and) when somebody has a flight coming up . . . they suddenly start looking at the news,” says Bunn, whose Connecticut-based
SOAR
organization offers counselling to fretful flyers.

“They say, ‘Jesus Christ, just when I’m starting to fly all this happens — it must mean something.’ But the clustering of things together just doesn’t mean anything.”

Bunn cites U.S.
statistics
that show driving just over three miles (4.8 kilometers) in a car on the safest of highways puts motorists at greater risk than airline passengers.

But such oft-cited statistics on air travel safety offer little comfort to the estimated one in six people who have a fear of flying.

“Statistics don’t help because . . . the problem is there’s always this number one in statistics,” Bunn says, alluding to crash figures like one in 10,000 or one in a million.

“And the person can identify ‘I can be that one. There’s no way if I can get on that plane that I can prove that nothing is going to happen to me.’ ”

For such people, Bunn and Oakville psychologist Ian Shulman offer several tips to fight off the fright of flight.

For one, Bunn notes that people with flying fears are typically quite comfortable behind the wheel of a car. And this comfort has much to do with the sense of control that driving offers.

He says fearful flyers can try transferring that personal control to the pilots and planes and the checklists and backup mechanical and electrical systems they employ.

“You can’t take control of the airplane, but when I tell people that the pilots have enormous control (they say), ‘Ah, that sounds good.’

“So if Problem A happens, here’s what the pilots do, step by step by step, (and they say), ‘Oh my God, I never knew that. I just thought if anything went wrong we were doomed.’ ”

Bunn says a conscious sense of control — even a transferred, proxy one — can turn off the ancient part of the brain known as the amygdala that is responsible for fear and its related hormone triggers.

He adds that these stressful hormones can be calmed by the release of the neuro-chemical oxytocin. Oxytocin can be released if one imagines the physical and emotional activities that trigger it, including breast feeding, falling in love and — frankly — sex.

“It’s a little X-rated, but it really, really works,” says Bunn, author of the book
SOAR: The Breakthrough Treatment for Fear of Flying
.

But he says self-examination of your fear and its physical manifestations can ease them best.

“When your arousal system turns on and you start to panic, then your ability to think clearly shuts down — we go into just fight/flight mode.

“Becoming . . . a student of your own body, so that you start to be more conscious of when your body’s arousal starts to increase, that helps the thinking part of your brain to stay online and it helps you continue to think things through rationally.”

Shulman says that keeping intellectual analysis working can allow you to concentrate on the fundamental safeness of air travel.

“When people can keep that thinking part of their brain online then they can work themselves down and remain calmer,” he says.

He adds that people should be aware of the “multiplication effect” that mass media coverage can bring to a problem, increasing concerns about it far out of proportion to any it might merit.

“It’s everywhere all the time, but it doesn’t mean it happens all the time. It just means that there are a lot of people who want to talk about it.”

Shulman notes that simply holding the hand of a loved one can also increase oxytocin levels, so having a spouse beside you might have benefits beyond a shared customs card.

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